IIT Madras Invites Applications from Students for 8-week Free Online Course on Data Science

Chennai: IIT Madras has invited applications from undergraduate and postgraduate students as well as anybody interested for a free online course on data science. The course called “Data Science for Engineers” aims at introducing participants to R as a programming language and the mathematical foundations required for data science. Students will also be introduced to first level data science algorithms, data analytics problem solving framework and a practical capstone case study.

The course will be conducted by professor Rengaswamy was a professor of chemical engineering and co-director of the process control and optimization consortium at Texas Tech University, Lubbock, USA. He was also a professor and associate professor at Clarkson University, USA and an assistant professor at IIT Bombay. Professor Shankar Narasimhan who is currently a professor in the department of Chemical Engineering at IIT Madras will also take the course.

What the IIT Madras Free Online Course on Data Science Will Offer?

The following topics will be covered as part of the free online course on data science:

• Course philosophy and introduction to R.
• Linear algebra for data science.
• Algebraic view: Vectors, matrices, product of matrix and vector, rank, null space, solution of over-determined set of equations and pseudo-inverse.
• Geometric view: Vectors, distance, projections, and eigenvalue decomposition.
• Statistics such as descriptive statistics, notion of probability, distributions, mean, variance, covariance, covariance matrix, understanding univariate and multivariate normal distributions, introduction to hypothesis testing, confidence interval for estimates.
• Optimization: Typology of data science problems and a solution framework, and simple linear regression and verifying assumptions used in linear regression.
• Multivariate linear regression, model assessment, assessing importance of different variables, and subset selection.
• Classification using logistic regression.
• Classification using kNN and k-means clustering.

Outcomes of Taking the IIT Madras Free Online Course on Data Science

Some of the outcomes that IIT Madras aims to achieve through the course are as follows:

• Describe a flow process for data science problems.
• Classify data science problems into standard typology.
• Develop R codes for data science solutions.
• Correlate results to the solution approach followed.
• Assess the solution approach.
• Construct use cases to validate approach and identify modifications required.

Important Details of the IIT Madras Free Online Course on Data Science

Interested and eligible candidates will have to enrol for the course before 1 August 2022, and the course will be available on the NPTEL platform from 25 July to 16 September 2022. While the course is free to take those who wish to obtain certificates will have to pay Rs 1000 and take an examination on 25 September 2022. Those who wish to know more about the course are advised to go through the official page for more information.